What better way to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of ECM Records
than with an album of compositions that are indelibly linked to the
label and the artists who record for it; and who better to perform
it than one of the label’s longest serving musicians, Arild Anderson as
the soloist with arguably Europe’s leading big band.

Anderson needs no introduction. One of Scandinavia’s finest bass players,
who has worked in numerous aggregations as leader and sideman for ECM, and
a soloist who is more than up for the challenges that this project
was to throw at him.
The selection of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, however, would not
have been a foregone conclusion but even the most casual listen to the
music endorses whole heartedly that the right decision was made. The last
few years has seen the SNJO develop into a world class orchestra, able to
handle material from the classic big band era and composers to contemporary
commissions and works from the leading musicians around the globe.

The compositions on this live recording features newly commissioned
arrangements from six arrangers from
the UK, Europe and America that cast new light on such familiar material
as Chick Corea’s ‘Crystal Silence’, and ‘My Song’ by fellow pianist
Keith Jarrett (arranged by Makota Ozone and Geoffrey Keezer
respectively); but it as a complete entity that this project is realised
so successfully.

With superlative arrangements, a master soloist in bassist Andersen, and
an ensemble as flexible as the SNJO the album is captivating from start to
finish, and in an era of overlong CDs one has to lament the fact that this
is not a double album. In an hour long programme it is impossible to
single out individual tracks as the main event of the night.
From the opening ‘May Dance’ (featuring the orchestra’s director, Tommy
Smith’s tenor solo), Mike Gibb’s arrangements of Anderson’s
composition ‘Independency, Part 4’ to the beautifully structured and
dynamic ‘Ulrikas Dans’ by Trygve Seim (incidental y the only composer who
has a hand in re-arranging his own composition for the orchestra) Arild
Andersen and the SNJO provide a truly fitting celebration for the
music of ECM.